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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

US, Russia and Iran to wrestle in New York





The pre-meet news conference is even being held at the United Nations, and the meet will be televised live by the NBC Sports Network and Universal Sports — a rarity for a sport struggling for ways to make itself more viewer-friendly.

Wrestlers maybe can do, sometimes, what politicians cannot, said Nenad Lalovic, the acting president of FILA, the sport's governing body.

"The removal from the Olympic program of traditional forms of sports, which were its basis from the beginning and were in the program of the Olympic Games even in the time of ancient Greece ... is unjustified," Russian president Vladimir Putin said in March.

FILA, the sport's international governing body, will meet in Moscow on Saturday to discuss major changes designed to improve wrestling's standing with the IOC.

[...] wrestling officials are hoping to show the IOC and the world that a sport which can bring three such powerful but often clashing nations together is one worthy of a spot in the Olympic Games.

[...] a photo of Burroughs and Iranian wrestler Sadegh Saeed Goudarzi locked arm-in-arm on the medal stand in London has become a symbolic image on social media sites for the movement to save Olympic wrestling.


READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.sfgate.com